


pound of flesh

by sashawire



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Bittersweet, Character Study, Gen, Hallucinations, Pre-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, some uhh self-cesty elements but nothing intentional or explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29033700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashawire/pseuds/sashawire
Summary: There are cool fingertips squeezing her jaw, thumb pressing into the soft flesh of the side of her throat. The thing angles Vanya’s face back towards it, movements languid but firm. Its nails scratch lightly at her skin as it pulls away.“Don’t be like that, Number Seven,” it says.*On the third anniversary of Five's disappearance, Vanya sneaks a couple of pills from Klaus's stash. The White Violin is not buried as deep as Reginald hopes.
Relationships: Vanya Hargreeves & The White Violin
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065578
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	pound of flesh

**Author's Note:**

> The self-cest elements weren't _really_ intended but if that's how you wanna read it, don't let me stop you.
> 
> **Content Warnings:** Recreational drug use, hallucinations, dubcon for non-sexual touching/cuddling, implied self-hatred.

They're… a little gross looking.

Idly, Vanya rolls the pills around in her palm. Flat, round, circular pills. Growing tacky with the sweat pooling in the lines of her hand.

A little too close to her anxiety pills. Twice a day, with breakfast and dinner. It’s been hours, but when she swishes her tongue she can still taste chalkiness behind her teeth, lumpiness at the back of her throat.

To no one's surprise, Klaus doesn't exactly label the pills in his stash. For all Vanya knows, this is rat poison or Tylenol.

She brings her hand up to her mouth. The pills are smoother, slicker than her anxiety meds. When she licks her lips, there's traces of salt and gravel left by her palm. She swallows.

At first, nothing happens. A particularly loud truck rushes by below. There's a persistent breeze blowing across the rooftop from somewhere north-west, Vanya doesn't shiver. The foliage in and around the greenhouse wobbles aggressively.

Placing a hand flat against the cold brick at her back, she rasps one nail against it. The pills left a sour film coating her tongue.

At some point, between one rub together of her bare ankles and the next, Vanya becomes aware of a presence beside her.

They don’t smell like vanilla laundry detergent, like Mom does, or musty old-person smell, like Pogo. None of her remaining siblings would ever bother getting out of bed to follow Number Seven onto the roof.

She doesn’t need to compare smells to know it’s not Five. Or Dad.

Rolling her shoulders against the shudder creeping up her spine, Vanya peeks to the side, to the sudden alien presence.

The thing wearing her face tilts its head.

Vanya looks away.

Then there are cool fingertips squeezing her jaw, thumb pressing into the soft flesh of the side of her throat. The thing angles Vanya’s face back towards it, movements languid but firm. Its nails scratch lightly at her skin as it pulls away.

“Don’t be like that, Number Seven,” it says. Vanya can feel the heavy, familiar weight of a braid on her shoulder, but this creature wears its hair loose, burning orange from the street-lamps below. When it sees Vanya is looking at her, it smiles, slow and sticky as leftover chocolate at the base of her tongue. It pulls its bottom lip between its teeth, peeling back its upper lip. Its gums are shiny and grey.

Vanya’s breath leaves her slowly, like the whistling of a kettle.

“There we go,” it coos. The concrete they sit on is cracked and dusty and dirty, but the thing doesn’t seem to mind as it sprawls its legs in front of it, wiggling its bare toes. “Loosen up a bit. You always hold all your tension right—”

It reaches out its other hand, and before Vanya can flinch away, spreads its fingers over the lump of bone and sinew where Vanya’s spine meets her neck—

“Here.”

Veins crawl up the creature’s wrist from the base of its palm, up its throat from the collar of its pajamas. Vanya sucks in a breath, meaning to ask  _ what are you, _ but instead it becomes— “Why are you here?”

The thing doesn’t answer for a minute, dancing its fingertips over Vanya’s neck and collar before leaving its palm, small and grounding, to rest on her shoulder. “It’s been a long three years, hm?”

She coughs out a laugh. “Sixteen, more like.”

More than a moment passes in silence. The creature removes its hand, slumping down next to her so they’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. More cars pass by down below, lighting up the street in loud bursts of yellow-white light. In those brief seconds when every sense is overwhelmed by the rumbling and honking below, Vanya can feel the thing looking at her.

She doesn’t want to meet its gaze, so she waits for it to turn away to scowl at the greenhouse opposite them. It speaks; “I miss Five.”

It doesn’t elaborate, side-glancing her and setting its jaw as if gearing for a fight. Vanya brings her knees up to her chest. “And?”

“I’m mad he left. He left us.”

Vanya responds on autopilot. “Don’t say that.”

“What, the objective truth? He chose to run out that door. And he’s gone, and he left us.”

She drops her forehead onto her knees and wishes she had her hair down so she could use it as blinders. “Stop it.”

“He’s probably living it up somewhere else right now, you know that? Somewhere far away. Maybe he has an apartment, and lots of bookshelves and free time whenever he wants and doesn’t have to eat oatmeal for breakfast and he probably has a new best friend, as well.” Its chest heaves and it grabs Vanya’s hand in a vice grip. “And he just doesn’t want to come back for us.”

“Or he could be  _ dead.” _ Vanya leaves her hand limp in its grasp.

“And whose fault is that? And whose advice did he not listen to?”

“You’re disgusting.”

It squeezes her wrist. “Am I wrong?”

“He was thirteen.”

“We were thirteen, and we knew better.”

“We weren’t—we didn’t  _ know better. _ We were just more scared of Dad than he was.”

“More sensible.”

“More cowardly.”

For a moment, that hangs in the air between them.

Vanya doesn’t look up, but its eyes burn into the side of her face.

Licking her lips, she changes the subject. “Do… God, this is so stupid—Do you really think he has a new best friend?”

“Would you rather he’s all alone out there?” Its face twitches back into a smile, and it is so, so ugly.

“Of course not.” The smile grows wider and thinner. Thankfully, though, it drops the matter, and her hand.

They exist like that, for a moment. Not quite touching, but close. Vanya shuts her eyes, wishes she were alone, wishes the thing would come closer all the same. Anything but this big, empty distance.

She slides her eyes back open as something tugs on her braid.

“What are you doing?”

It doesn’t answer for a moment, swiping the band from her hair and snapping it around its wrist. With all the gingerness of a bomb defusal squad or a gemcutter with a priceless diamond, it unsnarls her hair from its plait, allowing it to fall around her shoulders in curtains.

“There,” it says. “Now we match.”

They don’t, though, not really. The creature’s locks fall in a sort of graceless defiance, against hairbands, against hairbrushes, against the wind and weather. Vanya’s hair lies still and flat against her shoulders. She lets it cover her eyes.

Her doppelganger combs its fingers through her loose locks, humming something vaguely Fur Elise-adjacent. It takes strands of hair and braids them, absentmindedly, then slowly and methodically unwinding them and starting on a different strand. It’s comforting. It’s something Mom used to do before she… stopped.

Unconsciously, or consciously, Vanya shifts diagonally backwards until the bumpy ridge of her spine is pressed into the creature’s side, its arm around her shoulders in some strange half-hug.

It’s not warm, but it’s solid. Like a weighted blanket.

Vanya gives up.

She lets herself sag, head crashing into its shoulder, turning so it can wrap its arms fully around her. Blood from a papercut—she can feel something sickly and strangled welling up in her; barely recognizes it as the urge to cry. Instead, she shoves her face further into the monster’s soft, metallic-smelling hair, and hides.

It rests its jaw on the crown of her head. They sit like that for a while, in the trafficky black-grey-orange dark.

It happens silently and all at once—there is no  _ pop _ or poof of smoke or slow fade-out. Vanya doesn’t even blink. She flexes her fingers once.

Realizes that she is now alone on the rooftop.

In the morning, she won’t remember any of this. She will wake up to Mom knocking on her door, with the echo of a headache behind her eyes and a big blank spot where last night should be. She will take her pills with breakfast and then with dinner and then go back up to her room to play violin and she will not go onto the rooftop alone again.

But for now, she remembers cool fingertips against her scalp, and arms wrapping around her middle, and she isn’t climbing back through the window just yet. She just wants a few more minutes out here. She’ll allow herself that.

A van rushes by below. Vanya hugs herself.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @chickpeace


End file.
